An ERP Software is
only the starting point of a 21st Century Organization's Modern IT Infrastructure
Investments.

Within and beyond ERP lie many levels of integration, commonly referred to as EAI - Enterprise Application Integration.

EAI will remain a key focus area for business managers and software technologists in both small and large organizations.

This is for the following reasons :

Usage of a mix of open source and closed source software systems which will need to be integrated to offer simplistic views of the business information layered on top of the immense complexities in their internal storage.

Large Organizations have investments both in Microsoft's .NET and SUN J2EE platforms.

These need to be integrated meaningfully.

Most organizations are using solutions based on Microsoft's Office Productivity Suites (or similar Open Source alternatives such as Open Office) in addition to their custom build solutions.

These need to be integrated.

In fact, Microsoft has started positioning it's Office Suite of Applications as Front Ends for Enterprise Systems.(e.g. Integrating MS Office with SAP via the Duet solution.)

This trend will further accelerate and continue.

Even SAAS (Software As A Service) solutions which usually cater to a narrow well-defined application niche will need to be integrated at the end-user level.

Web 2.0 and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) business and technical requirements are becoming increasingly critical at the integration level.